[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 99 (Tuesday, June 24, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H5644-H5646]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH USA GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a follower of Jesus and a 
lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church USA who is deeply grieved by 
what transpired at last week's gathering of PCUSA's General Assembly. I 
feel increasingly alienated from this rich faith tradition, which 
includes John Witherspoon, the only active clergyman to sign the 
Declaration of Independence, and submit for the Record a statement of 
protest by the Presbyterian Lay Committee Board of Directors, which 
expresses a similar sentiment.

                            [June 19, 2014]

  Presbyterian Lay Committee Board of Directors Repudiates Action of 
                         PCUSA General Assembly

                       (By Carmen Fowler LaBerge)

       Detroit, MI.--A statement of protest by the Presbyterian 
     Lay Committee repudiating the action of the General Assembly 
     of the Presbyterian Church USA to redefine marriage. The 
     221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has 
     approved both an Authoritative Interpretation of the 
     Constitution and an amendment to redefine marriage. In the 
     name of 1.8 million Presbyterians nationwide, the General 
     Assembly has committed an express repudiation of the Bible, 
     the mutually agreed upon Confessions of the PCUSA, thousands 
     of years of faithfulness to God's clear commands and the 
     denominational ordination vows of each concurring 
     commissioner. This is an abomination. The Presbyterian Lay 
     Committee mourns these actions and calls on all Presbyterians 
     to resist and protest them. You should tell your pastor and 
     the members of your session that you disapprove of these 
     actions. You should refuse to fund the General Assembly, your 
     synod, your presbytery and even your local church if those 
     bodies have not explicitly and publicly repudiated these 
     unbiblical actions. God will not be mocked and those who 
     substitute their own felt desires for God's unchangeable 
     Truth will not be found guiltless before a holy God. The 
     Presbyterian Lay Committee will continue to call for 
     repentance and reform: repentance of those who have clearly 
     erred at this General Assembly and reform of the PCUSA 
     according to the Word of God. Presbyterian Lay Committee 
     Board of Directors, June 19, 2014.

  Mr. WOLF. I will begin with marriage. After several years of internal 
discussion and debate, the assembly voted overwhelmingly to take a 
position which runs counter to the counsel of Scripture, which defines 
marriage as the divinely inspired joining of one man and one woman.
  It has long been clear that our culture is in the throes of a seismic 
shift on this issue. While the current marriage debate is centered 
around the notion of same-sex unions, in reality there has been a 
decades-long assault on marriage, such that what was once almost 
universally recognized as a God-ordained and created institution, the 
fundamental building block of any society and the nexus of procreation 
and childrearing, has now been called into question both in the larger 
culture and increasingly in the legal framework which governs this 
land. But perhaps the most striking and troubling is that increasingly 
this is happening within the church itself, which has historically 
served as a bulwark against the cultural whims of the day.
  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says:

       Haven't you read . . . that at the beginning the Creator 
     ``made them male and female,'' and said, ``For this reason, a 
     man will leave his father and mother and be united to his 
     wife, and two will become one flesh''? So they are no longer 
     but two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together let 
     man not separate.''

  This passage and others like it remind me of Reverend Billy Graham's 
comments and the lead-up to the 2012 North Carolina ballot initiative 
regarding marriage, when he remarked:

       The Bible is clear--God's definition of marriage is between 
     a man and a woman.

  In addition to marriage, I was also troubled by the PCUSA's action on 
Israel. I submit for the Record a Wall Street Journal piece which ran 
yesterday regarding the vote to divest the denomination stock from 
three American companies that do business with Israel in the West Bank 
citing their ``involvement in the occupation and the violation of human 
rights in the region.''

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2014]

                Presbyterians Join the Anti-Israel Choir


  Divesting From Companies Like Motorola Solutions to show Solidarity 
                         With the Palestinians

                          (By Jonathan Marks)

       The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is bleeding members. 
     Between 2000 and 2013, almost 765,000 members left the 
     organization, a loss of nearly 30%. Last week the church's 
     leadership met in Detroit for crisis talks.
       No, not about the emptying-pews crisis. The Israel-
     Palestinian crisis.
       On Friday, in a close vote (310-303), the General Assembly 
     of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)--the largest of several 
     Presbyterian denominations in America--resolved to divest the 
     organization's stock in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and 
     Motorola Solutions. The church's Committee on Mission 
     Responsibility Through Investment said the companies have 
     continued to ``profit from their involvement in the 
     occupation and the violation of human rights in the region,'' 
     and have even ``deepened their involvement in roadblocks to a 
     just peace.'' Israel's counterterrorism and defense measures 
     have included razing Palestinian houses (with Caterpillar 
     equipment), operating Gaza and West Bank checkpoints (with 
     Hewlett-Packard technology), and utilizing military 
     communications and surveillance (with Motorola Solutions 
     technology).
       The church signaled its antipathy for Israel earlier this 
     year by hawking a study guide called ``Zionism Unsettled'' in 
     its online church store. In the 76-page pamphlet, Zionism--
     the movement to establish a Jewish homeland and nation-state 
     in the historic land of Israel--is characterized as a ``a 
     struggle for colonial and racist supremacist privilege.''
       In a postscript to ``Zionism Unsettled,'' Naim Ateek, a 
     Palestinian priest and member of the Anglican Church, 
     explains the meaning of the charges in the pamphlet. ``It is 
     the equivalent of declaring Zionism heretical, a doctrine 
     that fosters both political

[[Page H5645]]

     and theological injustice. This is the strongest condemnation 
     that a Christian confession can make against any doctrine 
     that promotes death rather than life.''
       In one response, Katharine Henderson, president of New 
     York's Auburn Theological Seminary, said in February that the 
     ``premise of the document appears to be that Zionism is the 
     cause of the entire conflict in the Middle East,'' in essence 
     ``the original sin, from which flows all the suffering of the 
     Palestinian people.'' And amid intense criticism of the study 
     guide from the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, the 
     church's General Assembly declared on Wednesday that `` 
     `Zionism Unsettled' does not represent the views of the 
     Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).'' But the assembly didn't bar 
     the church from continuing to distribute and sell it.
       The divestment resolution that ultimately passed included 
     language affirming Israel's right to exist and denying that 
     divesting from the three companies is tantamount to alignment 
     with the broader Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) 
     movement against Israel. Still, the vote is a victory for 
     anti-Israel forces within the church. And the divestment vote 
     hardly means that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is ready 
     to shift its focus: The organization's Middle East Issues 
     Committee sees only one Middle East issue. All 14 of the 
     matters before it this year concerned Israel and Palestine. 
     No Syria. No Iraq.
       Another vote regarding Palestinian-Israeli matters by the 
     church's General Assembly, seemingly more innocuous, is 
     actually more disturbing. The vote instructed the church's 
     Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to prepare a 
     report to help the General Assembly reconsider its commitment 
     to a two-state solution and to create a study guide ``that 
     will help inform the whole church of the situation on the 
     ground in Palestine.''
       In its ``advice and counsel'' on an anti-divestment 
     proposal, the committee voiced its support for the boycott-
     Israel movement, compared Israel with apartheid-era South 
     Africa and declared Israel responsible for its own ``de-
     legitimation.'' It complained that the anti-divestment 
     proposal ``prioritize[d] Israel's security and underline[d] 
     the flaws of Hamas and other `hostile' neighbors without 
     noting the constant violence of the occupation.'' Even with 
     respect to Hamas, whose charter commits it to the destruction 
     of Israel, the committee felt compelled to put ``hostile'' in 
     scare quotes. The committee has some history on this score: 
     In 2004, it drew widespread condemnation for meeting with 
     leaders of the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
       The General Assembly instructed the advisory committee that 
     the new study guide should ``honestly point out'' that 
     ``simple financial investment in a completely occupied land 
     where the occupiers are relentless and unwavering regarding 
     their occupation is not enough to dismantle the matrix of 
     that occupation or dramatically change the vast majority of 
     communities or individual lives that are bowed and broken by 
     systematic and intentional injustice.'' The vote to 
     commission the guide was 482-88.
       With a dwindling membership, the Presbyterian Church 
     (U.S.A.) clearly needs new friends, but the church does 
     itself no favors by courting Israel's enemies.

  Mr. WOLF. The PCUSA's deeply misguided decision comes against a 
backdrop of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and even here in the United 
States.
  I submit for the Record a June 20 Washington Post piece highlighting 
the problem, which noted that ``Jewish leaders here are now warning of 
a recent and fundamental shift tied to a spurt of homegrown anti-
Semitism.''

               [From the Washington Post, June 20, 2014]

                A ``New Anti-Semitism'' Rising in France

                          (By Anthony Faiola)

       Paris--``I am not an anti-Semite,'' French comedian 
     Dieudonnee M'bala M'bala says with a devilish grin near the 
     start of his hit show at this city's Theeaatre de la Main 
     d'Or.
       Then come the Jew jokes.
       In front of a packed house, he apes Alain Jakubowicz, a 
     French Jewish leader who calls the humor of Dieudonnee 
     tantamount to hate speech. While the comedian skewers 
     Jakubowicz, Stars of David glow on screen and, as the 
     audience guffaws, a soundtrack plays evoking the trains to 
     Nazi death camps. In various other skits, he belittles the 
     Holocaust, then mocks it as a gross exaggeration.
       In a country where Jewish leaders are decrying the worst 
     climate of anti-Semitism in decades, Dieudonnee, a longtime 
     comedian and erstwhile politician whose attacks on Jews have 
     grown progressively worse, is a sign of the times. French 
     authorities issued an effective ban on his latest show in 
     January for inciting hate. So he reworked the material to get 
     back on stage--cutting, for instance, one joke lamenting the 
     lack of modern-day gas chambers.
       But the Afro-French comedian, whose stage name is simply 
     Dieudonnee, managed to salvage other bits, including his 
     signature ``quenelle'' salute. Across Europe, the downward-
     pointing arm gesture that looks like an inverted Nazi salute 
     has now gone so viral that it has popped up on army bases, in 
     parliaments, at weddings and at professional soccer matches. 
     Neo-Nazis have used it in front of synagogues and Holocaust 
     memorials. Earlier this year, bands of Dieudonnee supporters 
     flashed it during a street protest in Paris while shouting, 
     ``Jews, out of France!''
       ``Dieudonnee is getting millions of views on his videos on 
     the Internet and is spreading his quenelle,'' said Roger 
     Cukierman, president of the Council for Jewish Institutions 
     in France. ``Something very worrying is happening in France. 
     This is not a good time for Jews.''
       Dieudonnee was unavailable for comment, but his attorney, 
     Sanjay Mirabeau, said the comedian was simply speaking truth 
     to power.
       ``If the Portuguese were protected in France and had big 
     influence, then he would protest the Portuguese,'' Mirabeau 
     said. ``But as it is, there are others'' who fit that 
     description.
       Jewish leaders say Dieudonnee is a symptom of a larger 
     problem. Here and across the region, they are talking of the 
     rise of a ``new anti-Semitism'' based on the convergence of 
     four main factors. They cite classic scapegoating amid hard 
     economic times, the growing strength of far-right 
     nationalists, a deteriorating relationship between black 
     Europeans and Jews, and, importantly, increasing tensions 
     with Europe's surging Muslim population.
       In Western Europe, no nation has seen the climate for Jews 
     deteriorate more than France.
       Anti-Semitism has ebbed and flowed here and throughout the 
     region since the end of World War II, with outbreaks of 
     violence and international terrorism--particularly in the 
     1980s and early 2000s--often linked to the Israeli-
     Palestinian conflict. But Jewish leaders here are now warning 
     of a recent and fundamental shift tied to a spurt of 
     homegrown anti-Semitism.
       This month, authorities arrested Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-
     year-old French national, and charged him with the May 
     killings of four people inside a Jewish museum in Brussels. 
     The attack was the deadliest act of anti-Semitism in Western 
     Europe since a gunman killed seven people, including three 
     children at a Jewish day school, in Toulouse in 2012. 
     Nemmouche allegedly launched his attack after a tour of duty 
     with rebels in Syria, prompting fears of additional violence 
     to come as more of the hundreds of French nationals fighting 
     there make their way home.
       In a country that is home to the largest Jewish community 
     in Europe, the first three months of the year saw reported 
     acts of anti-Semitic violence in France skyrocket to 140 
     incidents, a 40 percent increase from the same period last 
     year. This month, two young Jewish men were severely beaten 
     on their way to synagogue in an eastern suburb of Paris.
       Near the city's Montmartre district, home to the Moulin 
     Rouge and the Sacree-Coeur basilica, a woman verbally 
     accosted a Jewish mother before rattling the carriage of her 
     6-month-old child and shouting, ``dirty Jewess . . . you Jews 
     have too many children,'' according to a report filed by 
     France's National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. 
     Meanwhile, not far from the rolling vineyards of Bordeaux, 
     stars of David were recently spray-painted on the homes of 
     Jews.
       A recent global survey by the New York-based Anti-
     Defamation League suggested that France now has the highest 
     percentage in Western Europe--37 percent--of people openly 
     harboring anti-Semitic views. That compares with 8 percent in 
     Britain, 20 percent in Italy and 27 percent in Germany. 
     Jewish leaders chalk that up in part to growing 
     radicalization of youths in France's Muslim population--the 
     largest in Europe--as well as outrage in the general public 
     and French media over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.
       But it is also far more complex.
       Anti-Semitism, Jewish activists fear, is becoming more 
     socially acceptable. In May, for instance, the far-right 
     National Front--a party long rooted in anti-Semitism but 
     which sought to portray itself as reformed--came in first in 
     elections here for the European Parliament, winning a 
     whopping 25 percent of the national vote. Yet last week, its 
     patriarch, Jean-Marie Le Pen, suggested just how unreformed a 
     segment of the party remains. In a video posted on the 
     party's Web site, he suggested that a Jewish folk singer 
     should be thrown into an oven.
       Le Pen's daughter and current party leader, Marine Le Pen, 
     offered a rare rebuke of her father's words and ordered 
     footage of the comments removed from the party's Web site. 
     The elder Le Pen's musings were nevertheless seen as 
     unsurprising within a party whose older members have long 
     harkened back to the days of Vichy France, the Nazi 
     collaborators who allowed tens of thousands of French Jews to 
     go to their deaths.
       ``I walked into my kosher sandwich shop the other day and 
     the owner asked me, `Is it time to leave? Are we Nazi Germany 
     yet?' '' said Shimon Samuels, the Paris-based international 
     director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. ``We've got the 
     National Front in first place. We've got Dieudonnee, 
     spreading his hate. So I told him, `Well, do you really want 
     to be the last to go?' ''
       Indeed, French migration to Israel in 2013 jumped to 3,200 
     people, up 64 percent from 2012. A huge uptick in departures 
     this year has Jewish leaders here predicting that at least 
     5,000 French Jews will leave in 2014.
       ``We've been thinking about moving for a long time, but the 
     climate was not as dangerous as it is now,'' said Alain, 30, 
     a medical equipment specialist who is moving to Israel

[[Page H5646]]

     in July with his wife and three children. He declined to give 
     his last name out of fear for his family's security.
       Sitting at his modest dining-room table in eastern Paris, a 
     set of moving boxes in the next room, he added: ``It bothers 
     me because this is not normal; this is not how I remember 
     France when I was growing up.''
       Two weeks ago, Alain said, he woke up to find his 13-year-
     old daughter, Michele, crying. After a recent attack on two 
     Jewish boys not far from her school, she said she was too 
     afraid to join her regular car pool. Instead, she demanded 
     that he take her to school and pick her up, standing guard as 
     she entered and exited each day. He has moved his work 
     schedule around to accommodate her request.
       Asked what she was scared of, Michele, an elegant French 
     teenager in a fashionable black skirt and white T-shirt, 
     looked down and said: ``I'm afraid that what happened in 
     Toulouse will happen at my school, too. . . . I hear what 
     people say about Jews. And I am scared.''
       Enter Dieudonnee.
       Born to a father from Cameroon and a white French mother, 
     Dieudonnee, ironically, rose to stardom in the 1990s as part 
     of a duo act with EElie Semoun, a Jewish comedian. But the 
     two grew estranged as Dieudonnee's humor became 
     indistinguishable from anti-Semitic diatribe.
       In the 2000s, he wooed the far right and the far left as 
     his campaign against Zionism made him an unlikely symbol for 
     both. Throughout the 2000s, he was repeatedly fined for 
     making a variety of anti-Semitic statements, including his 
     description of Holocaust commemorations as ``memorial porn.''
       Blacklisted from mainstream TV shows and radio, he 
     nevertheless thrives, with a cultlike following on stage and 
     via the Internet, where his satirical videos stand out among 
     a rash of new anti-Semitic Web sites in France. As he has 
     become less mainstream, he has traded larger venues for 
     relatively smaller theater spaces where he is filling seats 
     with fans across racial, political and socioeconomic 
     spectrums.
       Dieudonnee is an equal-opportunity offender. His act is a 
     study in provocation, targeting not only Jews but also gays 
     and mainstream politicians. Yet--as evidenced by the T-shirts 
     bearing the quenelle salute on sale at his shows--he tends to 
     reserve his toughest punch lines for Jews.
       Over the past year, observers say, his depictions have 
     sharply worsened. His act became so offensive that the French 
     government in January took the rare step of encouraging local 
     jurisdictions to bar his performances. The move forced him to 
     tone down his material, largely by deploying inference and 
     shorthand to get his point across.

  Mr. WOLF. The denomination's action on Israel stands in stark 
contrast to its inaction on the persecuted church in the region. The 
PCUSA expressly declined to sign a recently issued Pledge of Solidarity 
and Call to Action, which more than 200 religious leaders from across 
the country signed on to.
  Representatives of the American church came together across 
ecumenical lines to pledge to do more to help beleaguered minority 
faith communities, foremost among them, the ancient Christian 
communities in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. The PCUSA privately expressed 
concern that this action would be perceived as an ``anti-Muslim'' 
statement.
  The pledge itself was carefully crafted with input from faith leaders 
here in the United States and throughout the region and conveyed that 
the time has come for the church in the West to ``pray and speak with 
greater urgency about this human rights crisis.'' With the PCUSA's 
decision not to associate itself with the urgent call to action, I find 
myself once again out of step with my denomination in profound ways.
  I believe many of the giants of this tradition, among them: Reverend 
Peter Marshall of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where 
President Lincoln worshipped, and a former Senate Chaplain; Reverend 
Dick Halverson, senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church and also a 
Senate Chaplain; Reverend Louis Evans, pastor for 18 years of National 
Presbyterian Church; and Reverend James Boice, pastor of Tenth 
Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia would find it difficult to 
recognize the PCUSA church today.

                          ____________________